Firebrick Factory Destroyed my Vocal Cords

Ludmila Langrová was sentenced to prison as a member of a subversive terrorist group in the town of Žleby; a case concocted by the State Security investigators in 1950. Ms. Langrová spent the majority of her sentence in the RAKO factory, sometime also dubbed the “firebrick factory”. “We lived in a former stable; there were 78 of us, including murderers and collaborators sentenced by the state and people’s courts. The place was swarming with bedbugs. And they seemed to like me the most. We were allowed to shower only once a week, when they turned the water on for little longer. Most of the time, we walked around dirty, like if we powdered ourselves a lot. I used to sing in a church choir before my imprisonment, but the firebrick factory destroyed my vocal cords. Every week, there was a so called ‘filcunk’, when the guards came, strewed our things and searched through everything. Woe betide anyone who had something sharp! Even small nail scissors were forbidden; when we wanted to cut our nails, we had to borrow it. Some commanders were really horrible. They would wake us up in the middle of the night and yell at us. After that the mean guards whom we called ‘harridans’ would come in and strew our things. One hardly went back to sleep after that. At five in the morning, we had to get up to work.”